CrescentAre Rahu and Ketu real planets?
No, and Vedic astrology never claimed they were. They are two points, and they get more weight than most of the planets.
Open a Vedic chart after using a Western one and two unfamiliar things sit in it, always exactly opposite each other, always moving backwards. Nothing physical is there at all.
What are they, physically?
The Moon's orbit is tilted about five degrees against the Earth's path around the Sun. Any two tilted circles cross at exactly two points, and those crossings are Rahu and Ketu, the north and south lunar nodes.
There is no body to photograph. They are geometry, in the same sense that the equator is geometry.
Why are they always opposite?
Because two planes intersect in a straight line, and a line through the centre gives you two points 180 degrees apart. It is not an astrological rule and it cannot be otherwise.
Why do they move backwards?
The nodal line itself rotates, and it rotates in the opposite direction to the planets, completing a circuit in about 18.6 years. So the nodes travel backwards through the zodiac steadily rather than occasionally, which is why they are shown retrograde by default.
What have they got to do with eclipses?
Everything, and this is where they came from. An eclipse can only happen when a new or full Moon occurs near a node, because that is the only time the three bodies line up in the same plane. The mythology of a serpent swallowing the Sun is a description of that fact.
Why does Vedic astrology weight them so heavily?
They are given full dasha periods in the Vimshottari system, 18 years for Rahu and 7 for Ketu, which together account for a quarter of the 120 year cycle. Two points with no mass govern 25 years of the timeline.
How are they read?
Rahu is read as appetite without limit, the direction of restless wanting, and is associated with whatever is foreign or unearned. Ketu is read as the opposite motion, detachment and disinterest, the area where competence is already present and no longer holds any charge.
Whether you find that useful is a separate matter from whether the points are real, and they are real in exactly the way an intersection is real.
Find your nodes
Crescent computes Rahu and Ketu with the rest of the chart, along with the dasha period you are currently running.
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